Introduction

Introduction

We've looked at many hybrid options over the past few years. First we checked out Intel's RST Caching solution, introduced on the Z68 chipset. Then we looked into Seagate's first few rounds of SSHD's, which were basically a standard HDD with an 8GB cache tacked on to the controller. Despite larger adoption of SSD's taking place, Seagate continues to push further into the hybrid market, with the addition of dual mode caching and other advancements. Today we take a look at their most recent push:

Yup, that's 4TB of hybrid goodness right there. No doubt this is a desktop class product, but how well can it handle desktop workloads?

Seagate's latest enterprise class hard drive offers up to 6TB of space in a 3.5" form factor. The Enterprise Capacity series drive comes in both SATA III 6Gbps and 12Gbps SAS interfaces. Seagate was able to achieve an impressive 1,000 Gb/inch or about 1.25 TB per platter with the drive's five total platters adding up to the 6TB capacity. Perhaps even more impressively, Seagate was able to offer up a 6TB, five platter, 7,200 RPM drive without using helium.

The 6TB Enterprise Capacity hard drive comes with a 128MB DRAM cache. It is rated at 216 MB/s for sequential transfer speeds and an average latency of 4.16 milliseconds. The drive also supports 256-bit AES encryption and an instant secure erase function which overwrites data multiple times. Seagate further claims the drive is rated for 24/7 workloads at 550TB/year with a MTBF of 1.4 million hours. The drive comes with a five year warranty.

The drive will come in several variants depending on the storage interface. LaCie has already committed to using the new drives in its dual bay external storage products. Seagate has not released pricing on the new 6TB drive, but stated that it would price the drive at the same $/GB as last year's 4TB model. Expect the price to be around $650 MSRP before contract and bulk order deals.

It is a neat drive for sure, and I hope that the technology trickles down to the consumer space quickly, as 4TB has been the maximum single drive capacity for far too long!

For now, the drive will be used in the datacenter, production house, and security/surveillance markets (particularly in the datacenter market where rack space is at a premium).

Seagate released a network-attached storage (NAS) device intended for businesses with "up to 50 employees", called the Seagate Business 4-Bay 16TB NAS. Dominic Sharoo of NitroWare reviewed one and, obviously/hopefully, gave his opinion in the process. In short, while he liked the connectivity options, he shies away from a recommendation without a price cut and a firmware update (its built-in software is not compatible with Windows 8).

As for what it did well, he was pleased by its relatively compact chassis, USB 3.0 support, and the inclusion of dual gigabit Ethernet LAN ports. It is configurable in RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, or "JBOD" (just a bunch of drives). He also liked that, in his testing, the unit did not seem to require drives from a specific vendor. If you buy the unit already loaded with drives, they are formatted in RAID 5. For a four-bay NAS, that seems like a good default. It also uses a standard laptop power supply, which should make finding a replacement (or a spare) easy.

Seagate's aptly named NAS HDD looks very much like their 4TB Desktop model but internally it has enhanced vibration reduction as well as parts that are more resistant to vibration which should create a quieter and longer lasting drive. It also shares 5900 RPM and a 64MB cache but Seagate claims slightly higher seek times, 8.5ms read and 9.5ms write and time-limited error recovery which makes these drives far less dangerous to use in a RAID than the desktop model in scenarios such as Al has mentioned numerous times. The Tech Report's testing put it against Seagate's Desktop version as well as the WD Red that is also optimized for use in NAS devices, read on to see which gets recommended.

"Seagate's NAS HDD 4TB is optimized for network-attached storage and desktop RAID implementations. It promises better reliability than typical desktop drives, too. We take a closer look to see how the NAS HDD compares to its WD Red counterpart."

Benchmarking cached HDDs can be a difficult task as they are specifically designed to cache commonly used data which results in two very different speeds for data access, the 8GB SSD and the actual HDD. The Tech Report recently met this challenge when benchmarking Seagate's first 3.5" desktop cached drive with 8GB of flash and 2TB of platter storage. When contrasting it to some of the higher end HDDs available it became apparent that the more expensive WD Black 4TB was a faster drive but as it does cost more per gigabyte it might not be the best choice for every purpose. Check out the review to see if this hybrid device is a better choice than buying both a small sized SSD and a large HDD for your own usage.

"Seagate's hybrid tech has finally been deployed in a desktop drive. The Desktop SSHD combines an 8GB flash cache with 2TB of mechanical storage. We take a closer look at how that combo holds up against standard hard drives and SSDs."

Enthusiasts are wholeheartedly adopting SSDs for their storage media of choice with HDDs relegated to long term storage of infrequently accessed storage. For SMB and enterprise it is not such an easy choice as the expense to move to a purely SSD infrastructure is daunting and often not the most cost effective way to run their business. That is why HDD makers continue to develop new technology for platter based storage such as HAMR and shingled magnetic media in an attempt to speed up platter drives as well as increasing the storage density. Today at The Register you can read about a variety of technologies that will keep the platter alive, from Seagate's cached Enterprise Turbo SSHD, HGST's helium filled drives and the latest predictions on when HAMR and SMR drives could arrive on the market.

Earlier this week Seagate took the wraps off of its latest Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD). Dubbed the Enterprise Turbo SSHD, this latest model is aimed at the enterprise server market. The drives combine a traditional 10K SAS mechanical hard drive in capacities up to 600GB with up to 32GB of NAND flash.

The 2.5" Enterprise Turbo SSHDs are aimed at servers with big data analytics, virtual desktops, and transaction processing workloads. The NAND flash acts as a cache for the mechanical hard drive, and caching is done by the controller at an I/O level.

According to Seagate, the company has been working with IBM over the past year to put the new SSHD through its paces. As such, the hybrid drives will first be available in the IBM X and BladeCentral servers. The IBM versions will have 16GB of NAND flash and one year warranties according to the documentation available online.

Seagate further claims up to three times random performance increase versus 15K SAS mechanical hard drives. The 600GB 10K SSHD is rated to have up to two times better IOPS than a traditional 10K SAS hard drive without a NAND cache.

The Enterprise Turbo also comes with enterprise-friendly drive self encryption options. The Seagate product page notes that the Enterprise Turbo SSHD will have a five year warranty. Pricing and detailed benchmarks are not yet available though some preliminary performance results can be found here.

“Today about 50 percent of NAS arrays are sold diskless meaning that customers are challenged with identifying and installing the right storage for their system. By developing a drive like NAS HDD, we’ve taken the guesswork out of it and made it easy for customers to identify the right drive for their system,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. “By collaborating closely with a variety of partners who specialize in NAS systems, we’re making what was a confusing effort into a plug-and-play one.”

Featuring up to 4TB of storage the drive now enables NAS systems, such as those utilized in homes and small to midsize businesses (SMB), to provide up to 20TB of data in a five-bay NAS array. And with over 30 percent capacity improvement over competitive offerings, the NAS HDD 4TB drive delivers the highest capacity available on the market.

Cost effective drives built specifically for NAS solutions, the 4TB option has the capacity to store over 819,000 photos, 1 million songs or nearly 500 hours of high-definition (HD) video content—more than enough space for the average household. It is also ideal for small businesses with large enough capacities to support CAD files, medical images and databases.

“QNAP is thrilled to be teaming up with Seagate to offer our customers a high-performance storage solution optimized for NAS systems,” said Meiji Chang, general manager of QNAP. “The Seagate NAS HDD allows us to deliver the highest capacity storage offering on the market while providing our customers with a huge boost in performance and a reliable business level NAS solution for 24x7 operations.”

“Households and SMBs continue to generate a significant amount of data, and need fast and reliable storage solutions,” said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. “Rather than taking hours or days to transfer a large amount of digital content over the internet to a cloud storage service provider, Seagate’s new NAS HDD provides a high-capacity solution for fast data transfers and backups on-premise over local networks.”

Built to provide up to 10 percent performance advantage over the competition for 24x7 NAS applications, the NAS HDD is engineered for performance in always on applications and can support multiple HD video streams and user profiles. The drive boasts near silent acoustics operating below the range of audible sound for the human ear with as low as 1.9 bels, providing optimized acoustics for the home or SMB environment. It also features Seagate’s own NASWorks™ technology which improves drive reliability by supporting features that limit drive vibrations and support extended error recovery controls for better data integrity.

Seagate NAS HDDs are built and tested to provide industry-leading performance for small NAS systems. Key features of the NAS HDD include:

Improved Vibration Tolerance—dual-plane balance supports the unique weighted motor design minimizing vibration that can be amplified in multi-drive systems improving the drive’s performance and system reliability.

Advanced Power Management—supports multiple user-selectable power profiles that can optimize power usage for different workloads to minimize power consumption while maintaining high-availability performance.

Quiet Drive Operation—enhances the end customer experience with near-silent acoustics for low-noise environments like living rooms or office spaces.

Designed with compatibility in mind, Seagate NAS hard disk drives have been rigorously tested by some of today’s top NAS providers and flawlessly integrated into their NAS solutions. For more information on the Seagate NAS HDD and qualified OEM partners please visit www.seagate.com/www/nashdd.